Intravenous catheters for the infusion of fluids into the peripheral veins of a patient are one of the most common devices employed in hospitals and especially by Emergency Service Technicians responding to a scene where the patient requires emergency medical care. In providing medical services to a patient, emergency healthcare providers frequently are required to insert a catheter into the patient on arrival or before transport. Hospital medical personnel have the same requirements in tending to a patient.
The insertion of a catheter allows the medical provider to provide medications, fluids, blood, and blood plasma directly into the circulatory system of the patient. In the case of emergency responders, the insertion of a catheter also provides line access for subsequent hospital personnel, to allow for immediate care upon arrival at a hospital.
During insertion of a catheter into a patient's blood vessel, a catheter insertion device or introducer, is engaged with a catheter assembly. The introducer having a hollow needle, is inserted to puncture the intended blood vessel of the patient. As a signal to the medical provider that the needle successfully communicated into the blood vessel, blood travels through the length of the hollow needle and exits into a visually discernable flash chamber, in a surge commonly called a flashback.
The typically transparent flashback chamber of an introducer thereby serves as a visual indication of successful entry into the blood vessel. Concurrently, the flash communication of blood into the chamber alerts the medical provider that further insertion of the needle of the introducer, may cause the needle to pierce the blood vessel's opposing wall. Flash chambers in catheter introducers used to insert catheter assemblies are sized such that they fill with blood within a very short time period to allow the medical provider to verify the needle has reached its mark.
Catheters may be produced in two general forms, though-the-needle catheters, in which a catheter is threaded through the needle cannula of the introducer and into the vein of a patient, and over-the-needle catheter assemblies, in which the needle of the introducer and coaxial outer catheter, are inserted into the vein or artery concurrently, whereafter the needle is withdrawn through the catheter upon verification of blood communicated to the flash chamber of proper positioning.
In typical catheter insertion assemblies, for use by emergency personnel, the user removes and disposes the contaminated needle and introducer after a proper catheter assembly positioning.
Alternatively, a tab on the needle guard is employed to allow the user to simultaneously thread the catheter tube into the blood vessel and retract the needle of the introducer from the catheter tube. The needle guard then slides and locks into place to protect the user and others from the contamination.
Emergency responders, on arrival to an incident, conventionally check several vital signs before and during transport to a hospital. The same occurs in a hospital emergency room when a patient arrives who has not been transported by an ambulance.
During this process the emergency provider begins to diagnose or treat the patient for perceived medical problems to save vital time for the emergency room doctors and increase the chances of survival during travel from the emergency site to a hospital.
A particular concern arises when the emergency personnel have to deal with an unconscious patient or one who cannot communicate. With unconscious patient or patients, who may not be breathing or have other substantial risks of death, the emergency personnel treating the non responsive patient are unable to ask the patient about their background or injury of possible causes of their health emergency. In the heat of the moment, while treating an unresponsive patient, and attempting to ascertain why the patient is non-responsive, frequently overlooked is the issue of blood sugar levels which might have caused the patient to become unresponsive. Such frequently occurs in diabetic patients. The same problem can occur with unconscious patients who have ingested drugs or may be having an allergic reaction.
With patients suffering from blood sugar issues, the diagnosis of low or high blood sugar levels in the blood, or with patients where other chemical substance levels in the blood which might cause the patient to be unconscious or unresponsive, such are not always discovered at this earliest stage of treatment when such information could significantly change the course of treatment, and the patient's outcome.
This can occur due to the emergency situation to which the medical provider arrives upon, or in an emergency room when the surroundings are hectic, and where the health care provider is concerned with ascertaining if the patient is breathing, and concurrently trying to place a line into a vein of the patient to provide fluids and/or medication.
This current inability for a quick diagnosis can often further injure the patient when, for example, hyperglycemia or hypoglycemia in a diabetic patient can easily be mistaken as alcohol intoxication or stroke. The patient may be transported without ascertaining or treating the cause of the emergency. Thus, valuable time is lost in treating the actual problem if the reason for a patient's non-responsive state is not ascertained quickly.
As such, there is an unmet need for an intravascular catheter insertion device and method, which concurrent with the positioning of a catheter, provides a means for visually alerting the medical provider, to discerned causes of non-responsive patients which can be achieved from blood analysis. Such a device should be employable concurrent with the insertion of a catheter assembly in the patient, with no extra effort by the user, and concurrently provide the visually discernable alert should blood from the patient have levels of substances past a threshold. Such a device and method should allow a health care provider to quickly and easily view test results, for a range of blood-discoverable disorders, immediately subsequent to the communication of blood from a patient, to the flash chamber of the introducer or angio catheter hub, during the catheter insertion process.
The forgoing examples of related art and limitation related therewith are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive, and they do not imply any limitations on the invention described and claimed herein. Various limitations of the related art will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon a reading and understanding of the specification below and the accompanying drawings.